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🪵 The Threshold

Responsive institutions require citizens virtuous enough to press new claims

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@miller_republicanism_1997, loc. 1290, @hardin_trust_2002, loc. 720

3 min read

Responsive institutions require citizens virtuous enough to press new claims

Evidence

Another is that if the republic is to be systematically sensitive to the interests and ideas of people—often newly emergent, newly articulated interests and ideas—then there have to be people who are virtuous enough to press appropriate claims; this applies both in the politics of difference and in the politics of common concerns. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1290 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Government generally protects us against the worst that might happen so that we may take risks on modest cooperative ventures. Even while we are often wary of government and its agents, we rely on them to reduce the need for trustworthiness in many realms that government regulates or otherwise oversees. We rely on contract law and court enforcement to achieve successful cooperation in contexts in which, without such protective institutions, we would not risk cooperating with others. Similarly, instead of relying on purely individual trust in individuals to handle monetary relations, for example, we use banks. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 513 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Part of the answer in large-scale societies is to create stable governments that are relatively open, which generally, although not necessarily, means democratic governments, and to balance these with other institutions that have relatively autonomous power to stand against the government. At other levels and in societies of lesser scale, part of the answer lies in social structures that create incentives for trustworthiness. Much of the literature on the social benefits of trust neglects the question of how to stimulate trustworthiness; and in any case, there is relatively little on this question in general other than for the problem of creating orderly, liberal government. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 519 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Protective institutions reduce the trustworthiness we must demand of fellow citizens — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 513; Stable open government with countervailing institutions is needed to stimulate trustworthiness — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 519; Institutionalized government stabilizes citizens’ inductive expectations, not strong trust — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 720 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

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